Is there an easier way to manage a wallet?

I downloaded geth on a Linux box that I will keep as a dedicated wallet machine. I was reading on how to transfer funds and it's these super long javascript commands. Also it seems geth does not really run as a background server, nor can I start more than one instance, so whiel I'm trying to type in the console it's spitting out information such as updating blockchain.

Is there a way to have the blockchain stuff happen in the background, and some kind of GUI client that connects to the geth port or something? Like a client-server setup?

As a side note, is forwarding port 30303 absolutely required for it to work? I ensured that outgoing connections to that port are allowed but not sure how I feel about letting that traffic in, as if there is a vulnerability found someone could in theory gain access to my wallet info.